Ray Trygstad’s Techdirt Comments

This was one of the huge disappointments of my son's life

When my youngest son was little, one of his FAVORITE books was Diane Stanley and Dennis Nolan's book The Gentleman and the Kitchen Maid, about a young artist copying paintings in "a great art museum". Every winter we would take a father-son day-long trip to Chicago and when he was about ten he decided he wanted to take all his art stuff and go copy a painting at the Art Institute of Chicago, like the artist character in the book. So we planned the trip around that as the highlight; when we got there and found that they did not allow that he was crushed. For God's sake, even the Louvre allows artists to copy paintings. This killed any chance of my ever becoming a member of the Art Institute, despite living a mere 30 miles away. And it was a serious bump in the road in the young life of a pretty talented yet troubled child.

If they aren't selling what I want, how could I steal it from them?

If I understand Hilary correctly, she must be referring to merchandise that the store HAS IN STOCK but REFUSES TO SELL TO ME; correct? Let's stay it's a rocking chair. They have it--I want it--but they refuse to sell it to me because I just happen to live in the wrong geographic region for that model of rocking chair. So if I set up outside the store window with 12 board-feet of oak and all my woodworking tools and make an exact copy of the rocking chair, leaving their rocking chair still sitting in the store window, would she consider that to be stealing from them? (Oh crap, she probably would.)

Getty does plenty of abuse of IP--but this is not an instance

Getty has literally thousands of photos on their site that are official U.S. Government images from the armed forces and from NASA, all with the Getty copyright and watermark slathered across them despite the fact that BY LAW they are in the public domain. But this case is NOT an instance of their abuse of intellectual property.

If everyone had to take down every photo with a trademark in it, what would be left? What would fans think if Nike started claiming trademark infringement and demanding a takedown of every picture of a football player displaying a swoosh? Shoot, they probably even have a trademark on the word "swoosh", so they could be coming after me next. Actually, no, they have more sense--but if I were to say "little tree", CAR-FRESHNER might come after me so I'd better watch my step...

Selective screening...of old ladies!

Really! Instead of waiting at your gate after screening, stay on the backside of the screening area for a while and watch how high a proportion of those selected for additional screening are old ladies. It's astounding! And why? Because THEY DON'T PUT UP A FUSS! God forbid we should do this truly randomly or, even worse, based on a profile of potential terrorists. It is security theater, plain and simple, and I know, as I have mounted major security theater productions--as directed--during my career as a Naval Officer.

Selective screening...of old ladies!

Really! Instead of waiting at your gate after screening, stay on the backside of the screening area for a while and watch how high a proportion of those selected for additional screening are old ladies. It's astounding! And why? Because THEY DON'T PUT UP A FUSS! God forbid we should do this truly randomly or, even worse, based on a profile of potential terrorists. It is security theater, plain and simple, and I know, as I have mounted major security theater productions--as directed--during my career as a Naval Officer.

A common-law trademark already exists...

While the U.S. government cannot copyright material they produce, they certainly can hold trademarks. I think the U.S. Navy would have a very strong case to argue that they already hold a common-law trademark on SEAL Team Six.

Federal Certificate Authorities

The federal government maintains an entire infrastructure of their own Certificate Authorities, none of which are recognized by the folks who make the browsers. As a retired Naval Officer, I access DOD sites all the time and find that my browser is constantly warning me about these sites. One time I attempted to download and install certificates for all of the DOD CAs but locating them all, downloading them and installing them took me about two hours and I swore I'd never do it again.

Especially if you're stupid...

"...it's better to just shrug it off than filing a lawsuit, drawing a lot more attention to the mean things... and anything else that might get attention" which of course is particularly true when you might be drawing attention to the facts that a) apparently you don't know your own business very well and b) you appear to be stupid.

This is only an opinion, though; nothing actionable here. Move along now, there's nothing more to see here.

The Kohl's ad...

If I know that the only way I could see the weekend specials at Kohl's in Boston was to go to Boston.com, you can bet I would go to Boston.com to get to it. The newspapers have clearly not learned how to sell the local viewers they draw to advertisers; instead I have to go to the print version to see the Kohl's ad. Someday they'll figure this stuff out but meanwhile there is far too much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

WordPerfect used to do this all the time.

Back when they were their own company and not owned by someone else, WordPerfect used to sue anyone using "perfect" in their business name and having any conceivable connection to a computer or using words. As I recall it got pretty ludicrous but like many of these cases, the deep pocket will nearly always beat common sense, because it just costs too much money to defend against these types of ridiculous claims.

Unrelated tasks...

I can't speak for all of these post-9/11 agencies, but I can tell you the "cyber-warriors" of the Department of Homeland Security spend a huge amount of time focused on something that is COMPLETELY outside their mission and makes ZERO contribution to the security of the United States: child porn. Don't get me wrong: child porn is of the worst crimes there is and offenders deserve to be hunted down and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law (and maybe even castrated). But it is not the job of HOMELAND SECURITY to do this!!! In their case, this is nothing but a distraction from their primary mission! OK, I'm done venting.

This is consistant!

Having spent a fair amount of time in Singapore, I can tell you that anything negative written about the government of Singapore by the press anywhere outside of Singapore is considered to be "external interference in the political process of Singapore". They will block distribution of any publication that has committed this offense; in the 80's I saw them do this to Time Magazine. The NY Times may view this market as important enough to preserve their distribution rights by an apology.

I think I'll patent eagles.

That makes as much sense to me as allowing people to patent genes. How can anyone possibly claim any proprietary rights over something naturally occurring in nature? If I held the patent on eagles, then when native American want to use eagle feathers in their rituals, they will not only have to get the necessary permits from the federal government, they will have to pay me a license fee, because hey, I OWN THE PATENT. If anyone can come up with a really good way to get this by the patent examiner I'll go halves with you on it.

"The Party That Shall Not Be Named"

Naperville, Illinois had nearly 70,000 people attend the party for the release of the final novel in the Harry Potter series. The previous book release party had been named "Muggle Madness" but Warner Brothers blocked any use of "Harry Potter" or associated trademarks in Naperville's next celebration--notably, it was not Scholastic, who published the book in the U.S. So what did Anderson Books and the Downtown Naperville Alliance do? They just named it "The Party That Shall Not Be Named" and went right ahead. My son repainted his Yoda ears and went as Dobby, and everyone had a great time DESPITE the Warner Brothers boneheads, who obviously don't recognize the value of free promotion when it bites them in the butt.